diff --git a/pandas/io/parsers.py b/pandas/io/parsers.py
index 8ac1aed9d9af7..9d62c0c4b5d8d 100755
--- a/pandas/io/parsers.py
+++ b/pandas/io/parsers.py
@@ -867,7 +867,7 @@ def _extract_multi_indexer_columns(self, header, index_names, col_names,
         field_count = len(header[0])
 
         def extract(r):
-            return tuple([r[i] for i in range(field_count) if i not in sic])
+            return tuple([str(r[i]) for i in range(field_count) if i not in sic])
 
         columns = lzip(*[extract(r) for r in header])
         names = ic + columns